Digital payments company Block (formerly Square) and bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream, have begun the construction on a new bitcoin mining facility that will be powered by Tesla’s solar and energy storage solutions, Blockstream’s CEO Adam Back announced.
The 3.8 Megawatts solar PV array and 12 megawatt-hour Megapack is located at one of Blockstream’s U.S. sites in Texas. The $12 million joint investment is planned to be completed later this year.
After being regularly criticized for their significant energy consumption, most bitcoin miners are turning green. Block has pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030.
Earlier this year, Back told CNBC on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference that the mining facility was designed to rely 100% in renewable energy.
“People like to debate about the different factors to do with bitcoin mining. We figured, let’s just prove it. Have an open dashboard so people can play along, maybe it can inform other players to participate,” Back said.
The dashboard will show real-time metrics of the project’s performance, including power output and total bitcoin mined.
